Showjumper Denis Lynch launches CAS appeal against Olympic exclusion

Updated: Thursday, 26 Jul 2012 18:29

Showjumper Denis Lynch has launched an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport following his exclusion from Team Ireland for the Olympic Games.

Lynch was dropped and replaced by Cian O'Connor after Lynch's horse Lantinus tested positive for hypersensitivity at the Nations Cup event in Aachen three weeks ago.

Horse Sport Ireland chief Damian McDonald has previously explained why the decision was taken to replace Denis Lynch in the Irish Olympic team.

"Unfortunately Denis Lynch’s horse Lantinus was disqualified in Aachen last Friday. His horse was found to be hypersensitive," McDonald said on RTÉ’s Sport At 7.

"Hypersensitivity can be naturally occurring and there was no finding of wrong doing against Denis Lynch out of that.

"Unfortunately, two other horses ridden by Denis in the past 12 months have tested positive for hypersensitivity, and that meant this was the third incidence of hypersensitivity."

"He was disqualified from the Olympics in Beijing in 2008 so obviously that caused us a great deal of concern.

“We have a procedure which is set out in our selection criteria under article 2.8 to deal with matters like this, that was sent to the riders back in 1 March.

“We made it very clear that if we had any concerns about riders that we could require them to appear in front of the monitoring committee, and that the monitoring committee could deal them ineligible for selection if their concerns weren’t satisfied.

“On Monday, Denis attending a meeting of the monitoring committee in Dublin and after hearing (his) explanation and commitments and so on, the committee decided that its concerns hadn’t been satisfied and we had to take the decision to withdraw Denis’ nomination from the Olympic Council.”